Music industry icon taught class at DominicanBefore his death in July of 2016 at the age of 72, music industry legend Sandy Pearlman was a guest instructor in 2013 at Dominican University of California teaching a class titled “Curse of the Hidden Music Business” to students in the Communications and Media Studies Department.https://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/music-industry-icon-teaching-class-at-dominicanhttps://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/music-industry-icon-teaching-class-at-dominican/@@download/image/Sandy Pearlman.jpg

Music industry icon taught class at Dominican

Before his death in July of 2016 at the age of 72, music industry legend Sandy Pearlman was a guest instructor in 2013 at Dominican University of California teaching a class titled “Curse of the Hidden Music Business” to students in the Communications and Media Studies Department.

Mr. Pearlman was producer, creator, songwriter, manager and theorist for many of the most important bands and musical trends of the last 35 years: Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash, Black Sabbath, The Dictators, Pavlov’s Dog, Dream Syndicate. He was one of the certified creators of music known as Heavy Metal, Punk, New Wave and Goth.

As a producer, Mr. Pearlman was recipient of numerous Gold and Platinum Albums, for titles having sold some 40 million copies.

“In teaching communication and especially mass communications courses it's always great to bring in someone who has actually been a part of that process,” said Brad Van Alstyne, chair of Dominican’s Department of Communications and Media Studies. “We can always talk theory, but the real-world experience that only someone like Sandy can bring to the table is a priceless commodity for any student. He is an integral part of music history, someone who only comes along once in a lifetime.”

Mr. Pearlman may have been best known as founder, writer, and producer of the band Blue Öyster Cult, and for producing records by The Clash. He also was one of the pioneers of digital music downloading before iTunes, as a co-founder of the company emusic.com. A graduate of Stony Brook University who attended Brandeis University, Mr. Pearlman’s academic appointments included holding the Schulich Distinguished Professor Chair at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal. Mr. Pearlman was both a visiting faculty member at McGill and the Dean's Professor of Interdisciplinary Innovation at the University of Toronto.

The music icon, owner of Alpha and Omega Recording in San Rafael, also was a guest lecturer at Stanford, Harvard and the University of California Berkeley. In 2009, he was appointed as an at-large member of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

Mr. Pearlman reached out to Dominican in 2012 after hearing about the University's Big History program from a pair of Dominican students working at Double Rainbow, Mr. Pearlman’s favorite ice cream store in San Rafael. He attended the Big History Institute at Dominican in 2012 as its guest and spoke on campus twice in 2013 as a visiting faculty member in the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. In March of 2013, Mr. Pearlman presented “The Twelve Hallelujahs of George and Leonard, or, Handel and Cohen, Inc.” in Guzman Lecture Hall for Dominican’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.